Monday, July 06, 2009

A few days ago Robert Spencer wrote the following, in reference to the pretzels into which the Swift company has twisted itself to accommodate the demands of Muslim employees at its plant in Greeley, Colorado:

No one knows when this accommodation will stop, because no one has ever thought to ask or dared to ask Muslim groups in the U.S. just how much Sharia accommodation will satisfy them, and at what point they would be willing to begin to adapt to American society. And of course, if anyone ever did ask such a question and Muslim leaders answered in accord with the traditional canons of Islamic law, the answer would be that they will not stop demanding Sharia accommodation until the whole of Islamic law is implemented in the U.S., the Constitution overturned, and America is under Sharia government.

There is always more Sharia to accommodate, and now the precedent is being set all over the country that American businesses and institutions must change their practices in order to accommodate Sharia, but no one cares. Someone will draw the line somewhere, somehow, before it’s too late, won’t they? We’re all one big happy multicultural family, aren’t we? Aren’t we?

Someone will draw the line somewhere, somehow, before it’s too late, won’t they?

I’d like to address this question — not answer it, for there can be no answer — in an oblique way, by coming at it indirectly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For over a thousand years the normal form of European governance was the hereditary monarchy. Modern European democracy grew out of venerable monarchical structures, which were not destroyed (nor made vestigial) until after the devastation wrought by the Great War.

But where did hereditary monarchy come from? The institution did not spring full-grown from the head of Zeus. It was not the customary form of government throughout antiquity.

Hereditary monarchy — generally speaking, the primogeniture of a sovereign’s male offspring, usually accompanied by a divine seal of approval — arose during the Middle Ages, as the institution of kingship stabilized and was consolidated into the feudal system.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, much of Europe was overrun by various Germanic tribes. Within these groups kingship was quite different from the imperial Roman model, and also from what arose several centuries later in northern Europe. It was not at all hereditary — although being the son of the king could give a man a leg up, in much the same way that a child of a Hollywood star is more likely to become a success in the movies than others in his age group.

The English word “king” derives from a Common Germanic root, kuniŋgaz, which developed into the regional variants cyning, kuning, and koning, and eventually into the words for “king” that are found in the Germanic languages today. It was made up of two particles, which were, in effect, kin and ing. “Kin” has the obvious meaning, “those related by blood”, and the suffix -ing means “one belonging to or having the characteristics of”. These parts were combined into “kin-ing”, so that the king was an exemplar of his tribe, someone who best represented his own kind.

The office of kingship existed at more or less the tribal level. The king attained to this position through a combination of valued characteristics: prowess in battle, physical strength and courage, organizational skills, and all the other traits which might cause a man to be respected by his fellows. Gaining the office did not always require personal combat, but no king could retain his position without the skills of a warrior. The greatest kings — and the founders of what would later become dynasties — were those who were acclaimed in battle and also shrewd in political matters, who combined skill with intelligence, who mixed muscle with brains.

Based on his prowess and skills, the king was chosen by acclamation within the local group or tribe. During the early Middle Ages the landscape of northern Europe was a patchwork of local kings who, using today’s nomenclature, might be more accurately identified as tribal chieftains or warlords.

These were uncouth barbarians by the standards that arose five or six centuries later. They were violent, brutal, and unscrupulous towards anyone outside of their domain. Towards their own tribe — their kin — they were loyal and protective. The king dispensed justice within the group, and if he were not lawful and fair by the group’s standards, he would not remain king for long, for there were always competitors eager to supplant him.

Do these early kings — rude barbarians who took care of their own — remind you of anything?

During the Middle Ages, as what eventually became European civilization was emerging, local kings warred with one another over resources and territory. Kingdoms met and coalesced, either by conquest or mutual agreement. As a kingdom incorporated its neighbors, the territory governed by a king became larger, and what used to be neighboring kingdoms became duchies, counties, earldoms, and other smaller political units within a larger kingdom. These components could be traded or captured through warfare, so that the map of Europe resembled a crazy quilt of shifting political allegiances.

The feudal system was the glue that held the new system together. When a duke or count became subordinate to a king, he entered into a tributary relationship. The vassal owed tribute — in the form of monetary wealth or service — to his suzerain. Only within the feudal system could an entity as large as Normandy levy war against a comparable political grouping across the English Channel.

From a local lord’s point of view, inter-state warfare was bad enough, but lawlessness and brigandage within a kingdom were even worse. Lawlessness called into question the effectiveness and legitimacy of the sovereign, so that it was in the interest of the king to claim a monopoly on violence within his realm, in order to secure the political stability of his reign.

Thus was born the King’s Peace, the precursor of modern civil society and the rule of law. By denying the right to commit violence to anyone other than agents of the crown, the king guaranteed a peace in which the commonweal could flourish. Provided that he acted justly and without evident corruption, a king who kept the peace retained legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects.

The heritability of the royal office was part of the process of political stabilization. A kingdom in which rival contenders strove for the crown upon the death of the monarch was likely to be weaker and more fissiparous than its rivals. The institution of hereditary monarchy was a natural Darwinian response — the kingdoms that adopted it were more likely to survive, expand, and incorporate their rivals than those which did not.

Add aristocratic inbreeding to the mix, and by the time we arrive at the 18th and 19th centuries, the brawling barbarian strongmen of the Germanic dawn had given way to the effete noblemen with their inherited wealth and privileges.

Say goodbye to Gorm den Gamle. Say hello to the Habsburg lip.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Faustus:

Stay, Mephistophilis, and tell me, what good

will my soul do thy lord?

Mephistophilis:

Enlarge his kingdom.

— Christopher Marlowe, from Dr. Faustus, Scene V

A decline in the quality of kingship did not necessarily inhibit the general welfare, provided that the monarch could maintain the rule of law that allowed civil society to flourish. If justice was seen to be done, it didn’t matter that the warrior kings had devolved into wastrels, madmen, and pallid fops.

As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, the task of enforcement and tax collection was removed from the king’s men-at-arms and handed over to the servants of an expanding bureaucratic state. When the Industrial Revolution kicked in, the growth of the state became exponential.

By the time the 20th century arrived, the massive bureaucratic state had developed a life and logic of its own, and was only marginally affected by the personality of the monarch — or indeed by the decisions of parliamentary bodies. Kings, queens, governments, ministers, factions, and parties rose and fell, but the state behemoth continued its expansion regardless.

It’s important to remember that no cataclysmic events — not even the Bolshevik Revolution — interrupted the functioning of state bureaucracies. The Czar’s bureaus became Lenin’s bureaus, and the agents of the Okhrana continued their work for the NKVD.

The inexorable logic of the mass bureaucratic state is what has led us to precipice on which we teeter today.

The internal dynamics of a bureaucratic organism require it to grow, and grow, and grow. To grow it must expand its control over its subjects. Hence the welfare state, which sends the tendrils of the bureaucratic regime into every nook and cranny where ordinary people live out their lives. Hence the proliferation of laws, rules, and regulations.

Technological advances increase productivity, and as soon as it appears the additional wealth is vacuumed up by the ravenous maw of the modern bureaucratic state. Our productive surplus has been used to build the infrastructure and hire the employees assigned to control the people who produce the wealth — the “free-range serfs” of modern post-industrial society.

The state is everywhere, doing everything: keeping you safe, telling you what to eat and drink, setting limits on what you may say, and to whom. The state minds your kids, arranges your transportation, pays for your health care, puts you in a nursing home, and finally euthanizes you when your usefulness is at an end.

One of modern bureaucracy’s primary functions is to get your mind right, so that your actions serve the purposes of the state without the necessity of armed guards and constant surveillance. With a near-unanimity of ideology within the apparatus of government, the media, the academy, and public education, coercion is all but unnecessary. The gulag is in the mind of the citizen.

This historical process has unfolded inexorably to reach the endgame we are now facing. From the Enlightenment through Marxism and the Progressive Movement to post-industrial Social Democracy, the trend has been towards an ever-expanding bureaucracy, which of necessity requires more and more socialism, regardless of what name the reigning ideology bears.

As the 20th century progressed, the bureaucratic leviathan chafed at its final limitation: the nation-state. Only by dissolving borders and distinct national identities could the power of the bureaucrats continue to increase. Once again an inexorable logic drove the progression of ideological events as the century unfolded: universal suffrage, universal human rights, the elevation of “discrimination” to the rank of deadly sin, inclusion, diversity, multiculturalism, the EU, the NAU, and the UN.

To fulfill the global plan, our nations must be destroyed by incorporating people from alien cultures so as to dilute our separate national identities and remove the last barrier to the worldwide hegemony of the socialist superstate. Ideological indoctrination through the schools and the media has entrenched the idea that resisting the incorporation of foreigners is racist, xenophobic, and deeply sinful. The result is that it’s difficult now for most people to whole-heartedly support nationalistic ideals. No one can contemplate the defense of his own culture without a sense of moral uneasiness.

The international Islamic jihad has slipped a blade into that hairline crack of self-doubt and widened it into a gaping fissure. The cracks are now spreading, and threaten to bring the entire edifice of Western Civilization crashing down around us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Unfortunately for the mandarins of the international socialist bureaucracy, the strategic rot that they introduced into the system infects all participants at every level, so that the elite managers and the hoi-polloi alike have acquired the same allergy to national and cultural self-defense.

As long as the multicultural regime had no one to deal with but its own Western clients, this problem had no serious consequences. Where the internalization of PC ideology is insufficient, shaming, ostracism, and the threatened loss of employment or government benefits are generally enough to keep the sheep in the fold.

However, the system has now incorporated the elements of its downfall. The imported foreigners come pre-indoctrinated with an alien ideology — Islam — which is resistant to the suicidal tenets of modern political correctness. Not only that, the same ideology sanctions ruthlessness, brutality, theft, murder, rape, mendaciousness, and any other form of vile behavior that will protect Islam and inject it successfully into its new host culture.

The erstwhile guardians of our society are helpless in the face of the invaders. The only techniques that are available to them — tolerance, understanding, education, persuasion, dialogue, compromise, social pressure, and brief prison sentences — are ineffective against the parasites they so thoughtlessly imported. The newcomers are not only resistant, but even turn the principles of their host culture against itself. The guardians of the great Western enterprise can only stand by and wring their hands while the alien culture employs all the forbidden violent techniques to subdue and subvert the decayed socialist experiment that they now inhabit.

None of the former bulwarks of the West — the military, the police, the legal system, the churches, the schools, the government — are effective against the vigorous and deadly hostility of the newcomers. The native populace lies open to the depredations of its Muslim guests. The scimitar is at our throats, and our only recourse is to submit, to hand over all our wealth and women, and then await the instructions of the new emirs.

If there is to be a resistance, it must come from atavistic elements within the native population, from those in whom, for whatever reason, the precepts of the new metrosexual multicultural indoctrination have failed to take hold. If there is hope, it lies in the proles: the rednecks, the peasants, the crackers, the boors, the rubes, and the churls.

The old ways never died; they just retreated far from the salons and soirées of polite society. Hengist and Horsa did not vanish, but they seldom appear in the drawing-rooms of the bien pensants. If anybody is to defend and reclaim the heart of our culture from the inroads of the Mohammedans, they will be the ones.

If our police and military academies are more interested in graduating a diverse group of cadets than in preparing young men to fight and defend us, then to whom are we to turn? What group of rough men will stand ready to do violence on our behalf?

Make no mistake about it: such rough men will arise to resist the incursions of a violent alien culture. There may not be enough of them to win the confrontation, but even so they will rise up to engage the enemy. Violent resistance in some form will emerge. It is inevitable.

As of this writing, there is no sign that the traditional protectors of the citizenry are prepared to undertake this task. The police and the military do their heroic best, but they are hobbled by the insane rules of PC and operate under the thumb of superiors who are themselves in thrall to multicultural ideology.

Militias, motorcycle gangs, organized criminals, and other marginal groups are bound by no such civilized niceties. They are ready to ride out and do battle when their interests and their own kin are threatened.

So imagine that you are a working-class father who just barely gets by. You go to work, support your family, and do your best to live right. Thirty years ago your neighborhood was a modest but lawful inner suburb inhabited by people like yourself and your family.

But cultural enrichment has changed all that, and your twelve-year-old daughter has just been gang-raped by a group of immigrant thugs. The police promise to do their best, but their best isn’t much. Statistically speaking, there’s less than a 10% chance that the perpetrators of this abomination against you and your family will ever be caught, prosecuted, convicted, and punished. And then — even if the wheels of justice somehow turn in your favor — after a year or two the young punks will in all likelihood be free to roam the streets and repeat their monstrous crimes.

Now imagine that a local chapter of Hells Angels opens up just down the street. You notice that the muggings and assaults in your neighborhood decrease dramatically. You find yourself feeling reassured when one of those Harleys roars by your front stoop.

And, more than anything else, you notice what happens to the gangs of marauding punks who target little white girls. After the most recent incidents, the perpetrators — who are well-known locally for committing these crimes, even though the police can never gather enough evidence to convict them — run into a little “rocker” trouble. They turn up in back alleys with serious disabling injuries, and are sometimes found dead in dumpsters with bullets in their heads.

And you know what? You don’t really mind.

You know that what is being done is against the law, and that it ought to disturb you. It violates what used to be your sense of right and wrong. But you also know at a gut level that your neighborhood — neglected for decades by the politicians and the legal system — is now safer than it was before, and that you and your children can finally let go of some of the fear that you have been living with for so long.

And all because a violent motorcycle gang finally took action on behalf of you and your neighbors. They, unlike the central authorities, are taking care of their own — which includes you. No wonder you feel the urge to slip them a bill every now and then to help keep their hogs up and running.

The media refer to all of this as a “gang war”, as an “escalation by both sides”, but you know better. You know that what’s really happening is that the only people who are willing to stand up and fight are mounting a local defense against a deadly invasion. You know that the media and the politicians are lying to you, and all your neighbors know it, too. This subversive knowledge is spreading rapidly by word of mouth throughout your entire district.

The process described above is how earth-shaking changes occur and take the Powers That Be by surprise.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“But Baron,” you say, “do you mean to tell me that you advocate that Hells Angels become the leaders of a new political order?”

No, I don’t mean that at all.

My analyses — as I am forced to repeat ad nauseam — are descriptive, not normative. I describe what seems obvious and likely, speculate on what is less obvious and more unlikely, and try to determine what our choices are.

Suppose we face a stark choice. Suppose our only choice is between swearing fealty to the leader of Hells Angels, or submitting to the hosts of Mohammed.

The Hells Angels are not the kind of people you want to invite into your parlor to drink tea. They are, after all, criminals who are prepared to use violence to defend their turf.

But so are the Muslims. And life under their vile rule would be far worse than anything that Jønke would ever think of doing to you. To pick an example at random, the Hells Angels would never treat women like cattle. Nor would they have the inbred propensity to sodomize their little brothers.

The other day I asked Dymphna: “If your only choice was between the local chapter of Hells Angels and the Muslims, what would you choose?”

She replied, “Hells Angels, no problem.”

It’s quite likely that these will be our only choices. I keep betting there’s a third way, but I’m betting against very steep odds.

In order for another way to be found, it will have to form through the legal channels of our existing society. That means it will have to be done by voting, and that we will have to organize and propagandize against the media riptide that wants to carry everyone out to sea in the opposite direction.

It means that change can only be effected at the margins: a city council here, a parliamentary seat there, a newspaper editor brought around to our point of view.

I don’t think there’s enough time for such strategies to work, but I have to try. I choose to believe that we can save some version of what we have now, but it’s more likely that we are going to have to throw in our lot with the bikers, the militias, the paranoids, and all the other people who fall outside the mainstream — because they will be our only hope.

But I want to try anyway. When we lose civil society, we will be a long time regaining it. During the interim we will have to give up much that we hold dear.

So I’m committed to the effort to find a Third Way.

However, it looks like we are entering a twilight period of chaos, and after a while a new order will coalesce around the strong and the shrewd. Men who are committed to ruthlessness and lethality will then turn up to lead the remnants of the old order against the forces that would destroy it completely. A man of that sort will become the kuniŋgaz, the cyning, the rough champion who can protect himself and his own against the incursions of those who would destroy him.

Later, much later, will come the equivalent of King Alfred, to unite the warlords and restart the engine of civilization.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So now we return to Robert Spencer’s original question: Someone will draw the line somewhere, somehow, before it’s too late, won’t they?

Unfortunately, the field on which the line would be drawn is rapidly submerging and being eroded. Soon there will no longer be a place on which the line may be drawn, or distinct entities to draw it between.

Right now we are still civilized. We still rightfully recoil in horror from the idea of barbarians and criminals. We still cherish the lawful and refined civilization that we have painfully constructed over so many centuries.

But it may not be ours to keep. Western Civilization carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, and unless enough well-educated and thoughtful people awaken to understand that fact, it may be bound for the dumpster of history, where so many have preceded it.

The existing order depends on what is generally known as the social contract, which gives the state a monopoly on violence in return for its protecting its citizens. But that contract has been broken. Justice is no longer seen to be done.

There is a lag time in the reaction of the populace to this state of affairs, and it has yet to run its course. People are slow to rouse. Nevertheless, the reaction is inevitably coming.

It’s time to examine the real alternatives as they are likely to confront us. Not as we wish they were, not as we hope they might be, but as what is predictable and probable, given the times we live in.

The real question may be this one: When it comes down to a choice between two forms of barbarism, which will you choose: theirs or ours?

94
comments:

Jihadwatch is down at the moment so the link is broken, but I funnily mis-read your intro as "Muslims demand pretzels be shaped differently" (since the snacks are supposedly based on medieval-hands-crossed-in-Christian prayer, I thought this made "sense", in the usual paranoid Islamic supremacist thinking mode).

Though, now that I have mentioned this salty twist, and put it into the bubbling Zeitgeist, look for some Muslim somehwere to start protesting against the shape of pretzels as inherently Crusader-oriented and insultingly Islamophobic.

Wow, Baron, this is some pretty scary stuff. We certainly live in some extremely interesting times, don't we?

Now a question: what precisely did you mean when you invoked the Enlightenment? I freely admit that I'm not an expert on the Enlightenment. All I know about it was what I was taught in school, which is not very much. I was taught that it was a good thing. Am I wrong, or am I misreading your intent?

If I must choose between our barbarians or theirs, the choice is simple. I will go for our barbarians. Their rule will probably much harsher than the one we are used to but living under mahoundian tyranny will be nothing less than hell on earth quite literally. The way I see it, our own barbarians is the lesser of two evils, simple as that.

But cultural enrichment has changed all that, and your twelve-year-old daughter has just been gang-raped by a group of immigrant thugs.

This excerpt has actually reminded me of something I once read in the apparently defunct God Help Britain blog, under the title You might be an islamophobe if... If, among other points brought up by the author of the piece, You fail to celebrate the wonders of cultural diversity when your teenage daughter is raped by two-dozen Arab pigs, or something like that.

Now, to comment on the Baron's entire article itself, it was another brilliant example of a realization that has dawned upon those who truly understand what's going on in this world, as far as the journey which Western civilization has taken from the time of the first European warrior kings to our present: very few people truly know how hard the fights for freedoms enjoyed by Westerners these days were. And, nstead of treasuring those freedoms and fighting for their preservation, most people amongst us just take them for granted, as though they had never had to be earned, as though they've been available to us since the beginning of time. That's a point Geert Wilders talks about all the time. So does Robert Spencer. So does Hugh Fitzgerald, whose essays, much like many of Fjordman's, make this agnostic who acknowledges the invaluable role of Judeo-Christian tradition in shaping Western civilization get a glimpse of the Divine whenever they're published.

But, as the Baron has pointed out, the Jackal Manifesto is one of the first examples of how ordinary people have come to realize what's at stake, and what ought to be done to fight for our side. The fact that ordinary Swedes refused to allow Arab bogus refugees to get away with committing crimes, after no action was taken by the Swedish police in Vännäs when some of them beat two Swedish girls and raped two others, is another such example. And, though it would indeed be much better if no ordinary people had to take the law into their own hands, that's the only choice one has left when those who are supposed to help protect them fail or refuse to do so (as certainly is the case in Sweden when it comes to punishing mahoundians for the barbaric crimes they commit.)

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Robin Shadowes: If I must choose between our barbarians or theirs, the choice is simple. I will go for our barbarians.

"If there is to be a resistance, it must come from atavistic elements within the native population, from those in whom, for whatever reason, the precepts of the new metrosexual multicultural indoctrination have failed to take hold. If there is hope, it lies in the proles: the rednecks, the peasants, the crackers, the boors, the rubes, and the churls."

Excellent article, Baron. No doubts here, my lot goes with the churls, boors, paranoids, militia,those that cling to their guns and religion. As I like to call MCism, PCism, the toxic stew from our own kitchens that will gradually poison us, is radily becoming mussie overload, at all levels. There is no way in hell I will subject myself, nor any member of my family to a life under mussie hell from moham rule.I have had a few friends who were and still are bikers of the Hell's Angels mold. Never had any problems with them and it is as you mentioned in your article. They protect theirs and the territory around them.

I must concur on the third way, as try we must. The tide is rising of those who are becoming aware of what is being stolen from us and itmay be too little, too late, for now or the near future. I have seen some hope and it comes from my oh so liberal friends who are really seeing the other side of the river, and they do not like it one bit.They are now reacting and acting, in a most positive way.

I am a working class father, with a family, just barely getting by and I know what I would do and how I will react if that ever happens(Lord forbid that!) to my daughter or wife. I have witnessed neighborhoods turning into festering pools of crime and chaos.We have also lived through a neighborhood being taken back from immigrants gone wild, and it was not with the help of the cops but through the actions of those on thefringe of society. Perhaps the line will be drawn and armed when those on the fringes of scoietybecome the centers, the new foundation of what you called the "engines of civilization."

Excellent analysis. I believe this is the pattern we will see emerging all over the western world and you have managed to give us a plausible explanation of WHY this will happen. Perhaps even an explanation good enough to make the PC people understand and take it in. I too prefer our barbarians to "their" barbarians.

And Hells Angels, criminals as they may be, are way ahead of the muslims when it comes to civic behaviour. The choice is not a difficult one.

I have mixed feelings about the Enlightenment. For instance, it did give us Thomas Jefferson.

But, by enthroning Reason and promoting the idea of progress, it also provided the seeds that eventually gave us Marx, Socialism, Stalin, the gulag, and transnational multiculturalism.

Before the Age of Reason, human beings were understood to be inherently fallible and limited. Progress was at work, but it was towards the End Times and the Second Coming, and was ordained by God, and not by Man.

As God retreated, the progressive idea remained, but with human agency replacing the divine. Human beings became perfectible, objects like any other, to be manipulated for noble ends.

And yet the chiliastic impulse never died; hence the succession of revolutions which are always heralded to usher in a new age of peace and understanding and bring a veritable heaven on Earth, but which invariably end up full of murderous brutality and lead to the suffering and death of untold millions of people.

This is the damage that Enlightenment did to Western Civilization. By reasoning God out of existence — or at least into a distant place with no direct involvement in human affairs — the Enlightenment cleared the ground for the great totalitarian despotisms of the 20th century and the suicidal ideologies that still grip us today.

It was an unintended consequence of Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others. But it was a consequence nonetheless.

As for the Jackal thing: if you are white and find yourself in prison, the first thing you do is Klan up. Whether or not your believe in Aryan supremacy is irrelevant: if you do not join with other white people on the basis of skin color, you will be victimized by non-white people on the basis of skin color.

And, as our society becomes more and more a huge, open-air prison... well, you make the connection.

It's not a ban, but at most a request that people avoid talking about Russia unless it's actually the post topic, because the thread invariably descends into the most toxic, vicious flame wars.

I don't know why that is. The same thing happens when the discussion turns to Ireland or the Jews; when these subjects come up, people who are normally calm, polite, reasonable, and civilized are at each other's throats behaving like lizardoids or Daily Kossacks.

An excellent article Baron. Sadly, I have found myself coming around to thinking what you're saying is going to happen. The election of Obama as President means the Gates of Vienna, so to speak, are wide open. We are ruled by leaders who not only do not understand why America became a great country, they are actually hostile to it. They refuse to listen to what Islam states in no uncertain terms, Muslims are here to eventually take over and subjugate and convert Infidels. Throw in an hypnotized population more interested in the death of a pop culture freak like Michael Jackson or who's going to win the next insipid American Idol and the recipe for disaster is set. I wish I could say you're being unduly pessimistic but I can't.

1) Who cares? Criminal groups do not care about third parties. They did what? Damn, those bastards are even worst than us...They are not Nationalists, they don't care about their kin. Otherwise they would have something like a code of honor.

I see the Chinese caring about eachother, I see the Gypsies, the majority of immigrants, etc. But Europeans simply do not care about each other, especially in their great cities - which is especially sad.I know that in rural areas is different. For instance, American Rednecks, French country-people, the Portuguese and Spaniard folks who get involved in bloody fights with gypsies not because they rape girls or kill people but just because they have introduced ecstasy to the comunity. I guess there are many more examples of this in rural areas.In the cities it's everyone for themselves.

2) Your concept of "Civilised" is my concept of cowardy.A Civilised man is that who knows when it is justified to apply violence and how much of it should be applied.Civilised people/societies always direct their need for violence towards others (muslim stoning of adulterous women, jihad, bullfighting, box, cockfighting, Roman Circus etc. - Today in Europe, hooliganism conected to football is the main escape for it)

Never getting into violence don't matter what is the same as not being capable of standing for nothing.It's a coward thing.

My solution?Nationalism. But a clever one. An iluminated one. For instance, people who care for their comunities and are willing to fight for it.

Imagine a coalition of football hooligans who, instead fighting against eachother chose to fight against wrong doers because they want to fight for sports anyway.

When civil order breaks down, when the formal government refuses to protect its citizens, the "rough men" are no longer outlaws simpliciter. True, their reprisals will lack the objectivity and process of the rule of law, but when they are the only men who are protecting the citizenry, they will be acting as closely to law as then will be possible.

"If there is hope, it lies in the proles: the rednecks, the peasants, the crackers, the boors, the rubes, and the churls"

It seems you've been reading 1984...

Actually, nothing could be more far from the truth. Think about it: Only a tiny minority of population makes the world move on. And that's exactly what you're saying in your thesis (hells angels, criminals, etc.).

Just think about Gramsci and that all. The proles... the people will come next if the tiny minority creates enough gravity to atract them. Just think how the vast majority of people (at least in Europe) are not Marxists but think in Marxist terms, are not religeous but think in Christian terms.

I'd even say that the current culture in Europe is not Judeo-Christian (isn't that an oxymorous if the Old Testement is already Christian?) but CHRISTIAN-MARXIST. At least, in the West of the continent.

And I have no proof or reason to believe that the proles will be the first to get into the train that the tiny minority drives.Maybe the elites can change first if they understand that they can capitalise more if they are among the first ones to turn the paradigm (just look to the ex-Marxists who suddently after the Revolution turned Socialists and Social-Democrats in this tiny country. Some of them:José Manuel Durão Barroso (President of the European Comission),António Guterres (High Comissar for the Refugees of the United Nations),José Sócrates (Portuguese Prime Minister and strong man of the strong Socialst party. Probabily wanted by the British authorities and killer of "Eurojust", pseudo-head of the Lisbon Treaty),Jorge Sampaio (Ah... some important job at the United Nations),Mário Soares (The father of democracy [here]). And so many others that have no international projection out of the Socialist/Marxist circles).

Damn, JUST LOOK HOW EVERYBODY LIKES OBAMA but nobody knows really why. The control of the proles is a matter of "gravitas". Just like their love and admiration.

Not only do I agree with much of what you say, but what you say fits in well with what's in my post. So it seems to me that either you read the post with less than full comprehension, or that my writing is insufficiently lucid.

Thank you, Baron, for your superlative essay. You have neatly abstracted the metapattern of Western Civilization for the past 1,500 years. This is a problem that has vexed me for years. We like to think of the authority of the (supposedly) Almighty State as legitimate, but where does that legitimacy come from?How does the State gain legitimacy, how does the State retain it?And how does the State LOSE legitimacy?? Uhh... maybe by taxing me into poverty no matter how hard I work and just giving away everything I and my parents and grandparents ever worked for to a bunch of ULTRA-VIOLENT third world BARBARIAN THUGS who will physically assault me while the annointed agents of the State (who are said to be BETTER than unwashed taxpayer/serfs like me) stand by impotently. Such periods of decay in State legitimacy have occured before in specific times and places (check the Wikipedia article for "commitee of vigilance") but the current cycle of decay appears to system- wide, universal, global in scope.Because the hour is so late and the threat so grave, I realized that the last presidential election cycle was crucial to our survival.Well, look what we ended up with.......

Is it just me who thinks that Baron's repply to Natalie over the Enlightment was pure poetry?

Exellent done, Baron. I had never saw someone putting it as "nicely put" as you did.

And I almost have blanks whenever people focus on the enlightment and can't express myself properly. With that repply of yours, I think it will not happen again.

---------------------------

Henrik, I don't want to annoy you but...why not the good days of Rome proper (the idea more than any time) since I have the impression that all Europe has done untill the Enlightment was to recreate Rome itself?To some extent, Europe only gave up Rome when it gave up Aristocracy and adopted Marxism at large, after the World War One and the End of "la belle epoque" (if it did not extend up to the 1920s)?

There is a third way, Baron, although it's a way you don't see because you have your blinders on.

It is to continue the path toward an international one-world state, built upon the ideals of western civilization.

The leaders in this effort should be a strengthened European union, run by new leaders elected to their posts by an aroused electorate, and the United States, led by enlightened leaders engaging and proselytising the rest of the world.

The message of the West has reached Iran, and the outcome is that radical Islam is doomed, if we have the tenacity and wisdom that Ronald Reagan and the west had in the 1980's to see it to its end without blowing up the world in the process, or killing hundreds of millions of people.

And if that means accommodating the wishes of Muslim factory workers, just as we accommodate the wishes of Jewish and Christian factory workers by taking off Saturday, Sunday, and Christmas, so be it.

Gordon, you're the blind one here. Accommodating the Muslims is not going to endear us to them. Even if we accommodate their wishes, they will never be satisfied. They will continue to foist their demands on us and they will not rest until we are subjugated under Islamic rule.

What is the solution to our problems? I really don't know. The situation may turn out to what the Baron has said in this essay, or there may be something completely different. But accommodating is not the answer.

I really do not think so. Well, a little. Okay, a lot. But my two points remain, especially the one that I think goes against yout analysis:That the Criminals can be transformed in good folks. I'd just say it's not that linear and that you are being "too optimistic".

I still think Civil Wars are more likely than this cenario where we have to opt between Hells Angels like guys and ethnic muslims thugs.

The far left (anarchists and others) and the minority groups will help eachother.

It may be possible that local criminals may face some rival gangs of ethnic minorities.But I think they have no power in the face of the Gramscian net that encircles us, without whom the muslims and other minorities would not be severe a problem.

gordon, i'm disappointed in your post. usually you at least bring a smile to my face, but your 'one world now' piffle above lacked conviction, which made me wonder whether you even believed it yourself.

hard indeed is the life of the eternal iconoclast. are you perhaps running out of steam, old boy? or just having an off day?

Well, the Summer is a season of fish. And a good fish asks for a good vinho verde :) And seafood as well, although I prefer seafood with champagne or Coke (yes, I'm very refined: Coke)

But if you're talking about the time to pick the grapes I think it's too soon yet. The ideal time it's more like September, I think: In the end of Summer when the sun's still hot and the first winds of Autum start to blow.

But the time here has been crazy: almost 40ºC in May, and now 20ºC or less in July.

I must confess that I don't like wine too much. The sweet coke, American style, is still a disloyal competition. Sometimes I enjoy beer during meals but because I'm thin and I don't exercise much these days, beer fills too much space in my stomach and I discovered that I eat less when I drink beer during meals and become hungry 1 hour later.Beer has then its place almost exclusively to nights out with my friends. But I still am not a great fan of it and drink it only because it's the male thing to do :) I rarely have more than 0,5l in one night.In fact I like beer so little that I'd usually drink Sangria instead of beer to open the night. This, in a somewhat popular place where 90% of it is beer-or-sangria (the house's specialties) and where 90% of the boys pick bear. Even a majority of the girls who drink there pick beer...

This untill when, in one of those hot May nights, they gave me an unbearably hot, awfully sweet and almost devoid of alcohol Sangria.

I don't know if you know Sangria, but I went to the Wikipedia page and learned some things: Wow... Italy, Spain and Portugal? That's my concept of Latinity: I crown here Sangria as the king of Latin drinks.Also, the translation is wrong. It's not "bloody". Sangria means bloodshed. Much cooler name hun?Bloodshed like in excessive bleeding.

I will recommend to you to try Sangria in a nice, relaxed social gathering. Be it with family or friends. With any kind of food, especially a roasted bird or pork. Sangria is great with pork.

I still have hope that we can turn this situtuion around without recourse to violence on a massive sale.

But if the civil route does not transpire, then the uncivil one is the only one that remains. For this to succeed against the massive Islamic presence in Europe, only massive civil unrest will be sufficient ie a civil war.

I do not think that Bikers gangs are sufficient to oppose the Islamic gangs that are prevalent in Europe, for the Islamic gangs outnumber the Bikers. What the Bikers can do, is be the trigger that sets off the main charge. They can also be the trigger that unleashes the forces of the state against the Bikers. The reason being that the Bikers threaten the state, while the Islamists simply wish to be the dominant part of the state.

Natalie, allowing Muslim workers altered hours during Ramadan, or giving them Friday's off (if they come to work on Saturday or Sunday), or even adjusting their break schedule to allow for prayer five times a day seems to me to be quite within the accommodations most enlightened workplaces make with their religious employees, and already do for their Christian and Jewish employees.

When Muslims start demanding that women and men be segregated at work, or that women and work cover their heads, or that no pork be served in the company cafeteria, or that work infractions be addressed with sharia-like punishments, then it will be quite easy to draw the line.

For example, I have no problem with state motor vehicle departments requiring that Muslim women bare their faces and heads when posing for a driver's license photo, because any religious modesty must give way to proper identification. I assume that they already do this with Amish women and the like.

I also had no problem with the Minnesota airport authorities firing Muslim drivers who refused to take passengers carrying alcohol. Actually, I believe that the authorities solved the problem by sending the recalcitrant cabbies back to the end of the line, but if they had wanted to fire them it would have been fine with me.

Our Baron is being a little hard on the monarchs and aristocrats of the 18th century. They were the perfection of generations of breeding and nurturing. Instance Fredrick the Great. But his overriding point is absolutely true.

I am coming around to thinking monarchy to be the form of government most suited to the human temperament, but it takes many, many centuries to grow one. We had better get a move on.

I can understnd your liking Coke. I find it palatable when the sugar is reduced with fizzy water like seltzer. Unlike most Americans, I don't drink it cold or with ice. Room temperature is fine.

Don't like beer either, except when making sauerkraut. Then it's wonderful. It also makes a good hair rinse (I can hear all the Danes and Brits crying "sacrilege". They sure do like their beer).

As for Sangria, I only like the kind I make myself. As you say, the kinds they serve are too sweet with very little alcohol. Vinho verde is a good base for Sangrias. OTOH, VV is so good by itself that I hate to adulterate it.

May I say that this analysis is brilliant and should be repeated at regular intervals and/or placed near the mast so anyone new to your blog can be brought up to speed. I truly hope it gets wider exposure somehow.

Why oh why is there not a wealthy conservative who could publish and widely distribute monographs of the best writings on saving Western civilization like the Baron's effort here?

Yes we are headed toward a new Dark Ages. There is a perfect storm of all negatives brewing.

Obama is a one-man disaster (backed by a toxic Congress) for the United States and therefore the world since the USA and the American consumer have been its economic motor, subsidizing countless socialist regimes and their bad choices of policies that don't work.

Perhaps the swine flu that has started killing young adults in Canada requiring state of the art respirators tied up for weeks per patient and seems to be gaining power will evolve into yet another precipitating factor, the Black Death of the 21st century. (Environuts who look on man as pestilence on this earth will be cheering if they don't succumb themselves).

I choose our Dark Ages, the one out of which western civilization rose, not the Islamic Dark Ages which has lasted for centuries and will have us all living in caves. Islam is stuck like a fly in amber because it cleaves to the ravings of an uneducated barbaric warlord whose "brilliance" was building a closed system requiring closed minds and the indoctrination system to keep them that way.

The problem is people don't know where to draw the line. After giving the workers altered hours for Ramadan, for example, the Muslims would demand more, like halal food, perhaps. And then that'll be accommodated, and then more and more things will be. After a while, it's really not so easy to draw the line.

DP111 said: Finally, once Islam conquers a land, it is final. There are only two examples where Islam has been repulsed – Spain, and the most miraculous, Israel.

What about the Balkans? After all, wasn't Serbia ruled by Islam after they fell to the Ottoman Empire? But one might argue that the Serbs didn't really successfully repulse Islam in light of what happened in the 1990s, I suppose...

Nordog said:"When Muslims start demanding that women and men be segregated at work, or that women and work cover their heads, or that no pork be served in the company cafeteria, or that work infractions be addressed with sharia-like punishments, then it will be quite easy to draw the line."

If you do not think these things can and will happen, have some more KOOL AID and pass out to your reality. In case you have not noticed the muslims NEVER quit in their demands for the rest of the world to be become one with Islam. Either by "gentle " persuasion or the edge of the sword. You truly are blind and your comments are quite wimpy and weak. Not up to snuff and I did not find them entertaining at all. Truly are losing your grip worse than we thought. There is no accomodation with Islam because there is no end to the demands that they will foister upon us, just as they are doing right now.

Accomodation, appeasement, cowardice, obamahamism, leftardism,towards Islam will ensure a very nasty future, if we are not past half way there already.

There is no peace with Islam, and with Islam there can be no peace.

Pretty simple to understand.

Baron, I posted this on my blog and have copies to give out to those interested here where I reside. A truly great post, really a fine work. What lively debate and discourse!

No, their WILL BE NO LINE DRAWN, AS LONG AS YOU ARE IN CHARGE. the MUSLIM PLAN IS TO TAKE OVER LEFTIST PARTIES AND GOVERNMENTS IN THE WEST. (ORGANIZATION AND MONEY THEY HAVE APLENTY, VOTES ARE INCREASING BY MIGRATION). Hear a quote from Krekar--

"WE'RE THE ONES WHO WILL CHANGE YOU. OUR WAY OF THINKING WILL PROVE MORE POWERFUL THAN YOURS"

15 years from now, LEFTISTS WILL BE MARCHING FOR GENDER SEGREGATION, SHARIAH-COMPLIANT THIS AND THAT, AND EVEN THE MIGHTY ( and terrible) LGBT agenda will show signs of GIVING WAY to the influence of the OASIS CODE (Shariah).

What is likely to happen is that the LEFTIST WILL BECOME TOOLS OF 'the Reality Borg' even as they use islamic forces to keep themselves in power (which will work until the islamists LIQUDATE THE LEFTISTS) and oppress the native people.

Alas, Bruce Bawer once wrote that the leftist elites seem to be able to maintain their state of denial (about islamic conquest of the WEST) right up to the point that they are STONED TO DEATH. IT APPEARS THAT HE WAS RIGHT!!

Welcome to the 21st Century, secular progressives. You will have created a culture SO WEAK THAT IT WILL NOT RESIST THE LIQUDATION OF YOUR CLASS. If the native MASSES ARE DOOMED TO BE CONTROLLED BY YOUR SCEMES, MANY of THEM WILL SAY, SO WHAT?? when Islam takes over. [ better to lose our culture completely {to Islam} than to lose it to the leftist dreams, is the rationale]. But if the LEFTISTs have their way, the masses wishes are irrelevant-- THE LEFTISTS WILL NOT ALLOW RESISTANCE TO 'MIGRANTS'-- THAT WOULD BE 'WESTERN IMPERIALISM'!!!

Alas, Bruce Bawer once wrote that the leftist elites seem to be able to maintain their state of denial (about islamic conquest of the WEST) right up to the point that they are STONED TO DEATH. IT APPEARS THAT HE WAS RIGHT!!

My conversion from center-leftism to no-surrender-to-mahound libertarianism, started by looking at hard facts about how inefficiently and wastefully state bureaucracies run things, was finished by that kind of reasoning.

One cannot support unrestricted mahoundian immigration and demands that their sharia-based way of life be imposed on all of us; and, at the same time, oppose racism (since Arab racism against blacks is an inherent part of mahoundianism/islam) and be in favor of women's rights, gay rights, human rights, religious freedom, separation of church and state (or shall I say, since the separation of church and state is not in danger in the West, separation of MOSQUE and state?), equal rights for all before the law and freedom of speech.

When faced with a choice between supporting mahoundian barbarism, and the inbred savages that follow it, and the rest of us, it wasn't hard for me to pick the latter.

Patriot USA, as for your posting at 7/06/2009 11:50 PM, I used to be 100% sure that the Germans' love of beer and pork would be an excellent insurance against sharia in their country. But one simply cannot make such an assumption anymore.

The existing order depends on what is generally known as the social contract, which gives the state a monopoly on violence in return for its protecting its citizens. But that contract has been broken. Justice is no longer seen to be done.

And with the breaking of that social contract so has the state lost its legitimacy. Along with that legitimacy goes its monopoly on violence as well.

As El Inglés has so astutely observed, publicly led "discontinuities" will be the most expectable form of reaction to Islam's continued depredation upon the West. As you yourself noted:

... the same ideology sanctions ruthlessness, brutality, theft, murder, rape, mendaciousness, and any other form of vile behavior that will protect Islam and inject it successfully into its new host culture.

Therefore, fire will be fought with fire. The way in which Islam weaponizes every honorable institution of Western civilization literally assures that vigilante action and extra-legal measures will become the norm. That the state has almost voluntarily abdicated its fundamental role as protector only further assures this.

The real question may be this one: When it comes down to a choice between two forms of barbarism, which will you choose: theirs or ours?

Much like Imperial Japan, Islam is in for a rather hefty surprise as to what levels of nastiness lurk, restrained within the bosom of Western civilization.

A person I know who used to work in the strategic planning for deployment of America's nuclear weapons recommends this:

Conduct simultaneous nuclear strikes against Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, Sana'a and Riyadh. Possibly with Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur thrown in for good measure. Then, while Muslims crawl out of the ashes, inform Islam that there's plenty more where that came from while setting about the fortification of Western civilization.

As with an old joke about the salesman who rent's a farmer's stubborn mule, only to discover that it must be smacked between the eyes with a 2x4, in order to "first, get its attention": It is becoming increasingly clear that we in the West will need to "get Islam's attention".

I continue to hope that Western powers will finally realize the usefulness of targeted assassinations against Islam's political, clerical, financial and academic eltie.

Should that prove impossible, it will become ever more likely that we will need to get Islam's "attention". My only hope is that we do one or the other before a few Western cities are vaporized in terrorist nuclear attacks.

As Islamic terrorism continues to degrade my personal quality of life, I am becoming far less worried about which measure is implemented just so long as something is done.

"Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, Sana'a and Riyadh. Possibly with Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur thrown in for good measure. Then, while Muslims crawl out of the ashes, inform Islam that there's plenty more where that came from while setting about the fortification of Western civilization."

This is an argument for a effortless massacre of mostly civilians.There is a difference between a massacre and war. War has a aspect of a duel and personal sacrifice, which is absent in massacre.

Any nation who undertakes this action will utterly lose legitimacy in its own eyes. The spirit of this action is also against the spirit of the European knighthood, who took great pride in personal bravery and protection of the weak.

Snouck: This is an argument for a effortless massacre of mostly civilians.There is a difference between a massacre and war. and personal sacrifice, which is absent in massacre.

I am merely sharing with you the opinion of someone who worked closely with America's nuclear arsenal.

While you are talking about an "effortless massacre", perhaps you might pause and reflect upon the outcome if it was Islam that had all of the nuclear weapons and us in the West who did not.

Do you honestly think that I would even be alive to type this?

Your talk of how, "War has a aspect of a duel ..." is sheer nonsense in the modern context of warfare. Were the concept still applicable, American soldiers would be engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the Taliban. A ridiculous notion at best.

As General Patton said about war:

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.

However coarse it might sound, war is about killing people. Islam absolutely refuses to field an army in uniform in its assault upon the West. There is a price that must be paid for such perfidy.

If Islam wishes its civilian population and warriors to be indistinguishable from each other, then we are not obliged to distinguish between them, now are we?

Obliterating the capitals of the most hostile Islamic nations would send a clear message that jihad only brings large-scale death. It is a message that Muslims refuse to confront and must be made to comprehend.

Islam already is hurtling towards the nuclear precipice as it stands. Where is it written that the West must stand immobile in the face of assured nuclear attacks when a very few first strikes would incapacitate our enemy entirely?

As always, I must remind you that I personally favor targeted assassinations of Islam's clerical, political, financial and academic elite. Killing a few tens of thousands of perpetually irate and high ranking jihadists could potentially spare the lives of untold millions of Muslims.

The fact that Western nations do not have the ostiones to set about this simple task only foredooms this world's Muslims to their own private holocaust.

The West is not at fault in this equation. Muslims simply refuse to abandon their quest for global supremacy and for that reason must eventually be discouraged from all further adventures, be they military or terrorist.

The only way of doing this is to kill enough Muslims whereby they no longer percieve global jihad as being useful or safe to prosecute.

THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OF PERSUADING MUSLIMS TO ABANDON JIHAD.

I would rather start at Islam's top echelons and work our way down. Current political reality indicates that the approach will be one of a bottom-up nature with all of its attendant horrors.

Where is it written that the West must stand immobile in the face of assured nuclear attacks when a very few first strikes would incapacitate our enemy entirely?

It's not written anywhere but most people will not support pre-emptive nuclear war.

General MacArthur wanted to detonate (25?) atomic bombs in the Yalu River to permanently halt the Chinese advance into Korea, but President Truman overruled him. Your friend's proposal to obliterate 6-8 densely populated capital cities is far more radical than MacArthur's plan.

You're skating General Jack D. Ripper territory.

Besides which a genocide of this kind would not change the fact that there would still be millions of Muslims in the West who would need to be extricated, and would likely now be out for revenge, unless you want to nuke Paris and Rotterdam as well.

"And Islam O'phobe is overlooking the fact that when a people are terrified for their existence, they will do -- and will demand done -- what was "unthinkable" before they arrived at that state."

I'm sure they will and I'm not opposed to using nuclear weapons per se but isn't the point of pre-emptive nuclear war to knock out the Islamic world before they it has the chance to put the West in mortal danger?

How likely is that to happen?

Maybe if the Islamic world launched an all-out war (short of nuclear aggression) against the infidels then a nuclear response would be forthcoming.

I understood that we were talking about unprovoked nuclear strikes on Islamic cities to prevent such an all-out existential war (and a "Muslim Holocaust") from even gaining steam in the first place.

islam o' phobe: ... most people will not support pre-emptive nuclear war.

People do not determine military strategy, generals do. Was the Normandy Invasion subjected to a popular vote? Do you think it would have passed one? Do you honestly think the nuclear attacks against Imperial Japan would have received a popular mandate? Would there have been any sense in risking it?

War is the downside to freedom. Freedom isn't free, it comes with a significant price tag. One that America and Europe are only now rediscovering.

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

...

The authors - General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato's ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato's military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK - paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope.

Far too many people seem willing to ignore that this one is for all the marbles. We are confronted with an enemy that will not settle for anything less than global domination and is driven by an ideology that purposefully downplays the notion of corporeal death and―to quote the Baron―"... sanctions ruthlessness, brutality, theft, murder, rape, mendaciousness, and any other form of vile behavior that will protect Islam and inject it successfully into its new host culture."

Islam's use of kitman, taqiyya and hudna makes it totally impossible to use any normal diplomatic tools. Barred the productive use of those peaceful tools we enter the realm of Carl von Clausewitz when he said that, "War is a continuation of diplomacy using other means".

Due to the theocratic compulsion that drives Islam, the West is placed in a zero option situation. The only variables are how much force is used in what sort of increments.

GoV participant, jhstuart, covered this rather well in his recent comment about McNamara and his Vietnam strategy of 'graduated response'.

We are already trying graduated response in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both newly liberated countries immediately lapsed back into voluntary application of shari'a law.

How many more TRILLIONS of dollars is the West supposed to spend on rehabilitating incorrigible Islamic regimes? There are another 20 of them still awaiting our tender ministrations. Who will pick up the astronomical bill?

Of even greater importance is how these countries can be prevented from becoming nuclear powers during the prolonged time frame of such delicate liberation and rehabilitation. [to be continued]

Baron, this fits perfectly into what William S. Lind has been talking about for some time now, the whole "4th Generation warfare" paradigm in which the legitimacy of the state comes into question when it proves unable to perform its essential function (protection of lives and property of its subjects). And if the state won't, there are be non-state groups that will.

This doesn't have to mean a return to some dark, non-civilized age - just a different era in which power won't be centralized.

By claiming everything for itself, the state has created a vacuum that faith, society, tribe and other structures once used to fill. Nature abhors a vacuum.

When it comes to nuclear war initiated by the U.S., it's the President with whom the decision ultimately rests. Truman ordered the nuclear strikes on Japan and nixed the nuclear strikes on Korea -- against MacArthur's better(?) judgement.

Out of interest, what would you have done in Truman's place?

Was the Normandy Invasion subjected to a popular vote? Do you think it would have passed one? Do you honestly think the nuclear attacks against Imperial Japan would have received a popular mandate?

By support I wasn't referring to a referendum or direct democracy. I just meant the influence of broad public opinion. What President (Obama?) is going to nuke half a dozen Islamic cities if he thinks he'll be impeached as the world's worst war criminal and thrown in jail because of it?

Although I do think that the nuclear attacks against Imperial Japan would have won a popular vote if it had hypothetically been put to one. There were a lot of people at the time who were wondering why the bomb had not been used earlier when it would have saved more American lives.

Besides, "pre-emptive nuclear war" is already being discussed and not at an Internet blog web site but at the very highest Western military levels.

They should keep all their options open, but I don't accept that it's either that or futile 'nation-building' exercises.

The current instability in Pakistan highlights just how dangerous it is for any Islamic regime to be in possession of nuclear weapons.

Once enough Muslim majority countries have nuclear arsenals THERE ARISES A NON-ZERO PROBABILITY THAT ONE OR MORE OF THOSE WEAPONS WILL BE DIVERTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF JIHAD.

There are no uncertainties about this. Allowed access to nuclear weapons, the MME (Muslim Middle East) will eventually direct them against the West. The timeline for this is breathtakingly short. A decade or two, at most.

That leaves the West approximately one year per each remaining Islamic nation to somehow disable their theocratic regimes. Such a goal cannot be achieved using graduated response.

Perhaps not. The Korean conflict did not have global domination as its explicit goal. While China's overall aims remain largely unchanged from that timeframe, the urgency and relative risks, even now, cannot compare to the significance of Islam's threat to the West.

Additionally, our knowledge about nuclear weapons and the variety of yields now available from modern nuclear devices make any comparison to Mac Arthur's broadbrush proposal an apples and oranges proposition.

You're skating General Jack D. Ripper territory.

Ummmm ... no. Please try to remember that I am bringing forward the suggestion of someone I know who has worked closely with these weapons.

No one has yet to address the simple fact that we are confronted with an enemy that would have launched a nuclear attack against the West were they in possession of such arsenals and not us instead.

To your credit, islam o' phobe, you are at least willing to couch the approaching conflict as an "all-out existential war". However, your larger context still contains some very flawed premises:

Besides which a genocide of this kind would not change the fact that there would still be millions of Muslims in the West who would need to be extricated, and would likely now be out for revenge, unless you want to nuke Paris and Rotterdam as well.

These "millions of Muslims" still represent minor percentages of the overall populations in their respective nations. Prompt military action and swift deportation could quickly squelch any move towards civil disruption.

I also question your motive in blurring the central gist of this thesis by confusing our discussion with the needless suggestion that I should "want to nuke Paris and Rotterdam as well".

Snouck: What is your position? Do you advocate Nuclear strikes against civilian populations or not?.

Snouk, you are a long time participant here at Gates of Vienna. It amazes me that you are not already aware regarding my repeated and steadfast advocacy of targeted assassinations against Islam's jihadist elite. I have already reaffirmed this position in this very very thread. Should you have any doubts about my longstanding position on this, please email the Baron for confirmation.

The problem still remains that Western political leadership does not possess sufficient steel to institute a policy of extrajudicial termination. Doing so would make them legitimate targets for terrorist assassins.

These spineless pols are more than willing to send our young men and women out to die in this interminable fight against Islam. Perish the thought that they might take action in such a way where they were placed in any danger. [to be continued]

Ilion: "Snouck gives every indication of playing the same game which has gotten the Western nations into the mess we're in."

What would that be? The absence of nuclear strikes got us into this mess? I think immigration and low birth rates got us up the creek.

Ilion: "And Islam O'phobe is overlooking the fact that when a people are terrified for their existence, they will do -- and will demand done -- what was "unthinkable" before they arrived at that state."

They may do the unthinkable.

Expelling Muslims from the West is the unthinkable. Large numbers of people need not be killed.

But the future leadership also has to wisely prepare for future generations. Nations that have massacres in their past are at a disadvantage when they need to motivate their citizens to procreate, defend borders, defend territory, fight invaders of every kind. And nuking cities with millions of inhabitants is a massacres of millions.

Those who sacrificed to protect the nation will be remembered well and be a inspiration.

If future leaders, whether Hells Angels or others, pull that off they may be like Jefferson or William the Silent for future generations. Their rough edges will be overlooked.

If our future leadership consists of destroyers of cities they will be huge embarrassments. They will empower the treasonous left who want to destroy the West.

There heritage will cause discord between politicians, army and citizens. The effects will be longlasting and severe.

"Besides which a genocide of this kind would not change the fact that there would still be millions of Muslims in the West who would need to be extricated, and would likely now be out for revenge, unless you want to nuke Paris and Rotterdam as well."

Makes me think maybe we should deal with the muslims in our midst first and forehand. Only problem is that in order to execute that, we must first deal with our own traitors first or they would never let us expell all these muslims. Or then again, just nuke the crap out of them and we deal with the scum among us later. I think I'll take my chances.

Perhaps not. The Korean conflict did not have global domination as its explicit goal.

But International Communism did. That was the reason for fighting land wars in Korea and Vietnam. Without that global threat it would not have been worth the body count or expense to fight those conflicts.

These "millions of Muslims" still represent minor percentages of the overall populations in their respective nations. Prompt military action and swift deportation could quickly squelch any move towards civil disruption.

Well I think you are underestimating the internal threat. Ten per cent - maybe more - of France is populated by Muslims and they don't necessarily need a majority to take over. The banlieus surrounds Paris in a circular siege formation which gives the "youths" a huge advantage.

the needless suggestion that I should "want to nuke Paris and Rotterdam as well"

That was tongue in cheek. I just think you haven't fully thought through how a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the MME is as likely to start a massive war as it is to avert one. The Muslims already have their overseas legions in place. France is a nuclear power, yet in grave danger from internal subversion.

Zenster: "Snouk, you are a long time participant here at Gates of Vienna. It amazes me that you are not already aware regarding my repeated and steadfast advocacy of targeted assassinations against Islam's jihadist elite."

I am not arguing against targeted assassinations. I am arguing against nuclear strikes against Muslim population centres.

We can pay Islam in its own bloody coin and not become global terrorists ourselves.

And Islam O'phobe is overlooking the fact that when a people are terrified for their existence, they will do -- and will demand done -- what was "unthinkable" before they arrived at that state.

Better it is Arab Muslims who are forced to rethink their objective of global jihad than Western powers finding themselves backed against a wall with only their huge nuclear arsenals to be unleashed.

This is why I have advocated a policy of Massively Disproportionate Retaliation against Muslim majority nations. For every Westerner who dies in yet another Islamic terrorist atrocity, a thousand or ten thousand Muslims need to persih.

It must be so decisive that petrified Muslims race down to the nearest Mosque and slit the throat of their jihadist imam lest he convert even a single new terrorist to the cause.

Muslims must be made to police themselves. We cannot do it for them. Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of us trying to do Islam's housecleaning for it. The results are predictably futile. Only Islam can police itself.

All that is incumbent upon the West is to impose penalties sufficiently harsh whereby Islam abandons terrorism and jihad in favor of continued existence.

UNTIL THE CONFLICT IS WAGED AT SUCH EXISTENTIAL LEVELS, ISLAM WILL NOT ALTER ITS COURSE ONE WHIT

This is why it is so important to decapitate Islamic leadership. Only the very top tier of Muslim leaders truly profit from this assault upon the West. The remaining population is nothing more than cannon fodder. No personal loss will be felt by the common Muslim as we set about killing their jihadist component. However, top level policy making actors will take on a vivid new respect for exactly what price comes with continued proxy attacks against the West. [to be continued]

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?"

A few examples may suffice. During the troubles in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, there were many attacks on American installations and individuals--notably the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, followed by a prompt withdrawal, and a whole series of kidnappings of Americans, both official and private, as well as of Europeans. There was only one attack on Soviet citizens, when one diplomat was killed and several others kidnapped. The Soviet response through their local agents was swift, and directed against the family of the leader of the kidnappers. The kidnapped Russians were promptly released, and after that there were no attacks on Soviet citizens or installations throughout the period of the Lebanese troubles.

islam o' phobe: I'm sure they will and I'm not opposed to using nuclear weapons per se but isn't the point of pre-emptive nuclear war to knock out the Islamic world before they it has the chance to put the West in mortal danger?.

Yes.

How likely is that to happen?.

While not as likely as it certainly needs to be, the paper I referred to above ("Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership"), represents a tipping point for Western military thinking. It is these generals who have real influence over modern military strategy. Not a bunch multicultural PC whiners.

Maybe if the Islamic world launched an all-out war (short of nuclear aggression) against the infidels then a nuclear response would be forthcoming.

This is where you indulge in a false premise.

THE ISLAMIC WORLD HAS ALREADY LAUNCHED AN "ALL-OUT WAR" AGAINST THE WEST.

It is only the current state of denial and outright treason among Western leadership that prevents this from becoming recognized.

I understood that we were talking about unprovoked nuclear strikes on Islamic cities to prevent such an all-out existential war (and a "Muslim Holocaust") from even gaining steam in the first place.

Again, you are using a false premise.

The West's potential strikes against Islam are not "unprovoked". Muslims and their leaders have been demanding "Death to the West" for decades. Cities around the world have been mutilated and their citizens slaughtered in unprecedented numbers. New York, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, New York, Bali, Beslan, Bali, Madrid, London and some 13,500 other deadly terrorist attacks provide continuous provocation.

Islamic terrorists staged nearly ten thousand deadly attacks in just the six years following September 11th, 2001. If one goes back to 1971, when Muslim armies in Bangladesh began the mass slaughter of Hindus, through the years of Jihad in the Sudan, Kashmir and Algeria, and the present-day Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq, the number of innocents killed in the name of Islam probably exceeds five million over this same period.

FIVE MILLION. Got that? That is almost another complete Holocaust caused by Muslims in the last few decades.

That our enemy intentionally maintains this conflict at a deceptively low level of intensity in no way changes the need for decisive reprisal. We are dealing with a vicious schoolyard bully that, as of yet, just hasn't had the chance to purchase a large caliber automatic weapon.

islam o' phobe: Out of interest, what would you have done in Truman's place?.

I certainly would not have yanked McArthur out of the war zone. His nuclear option was a bit much but more vigorous measures were clearly called for.

What President (Obama?) is going to nuke half a dozen Islamic cities if he thinks he'll be impeached as the world's worst war criminal and thrown in jail because of it?.

Again, you couch this issue as if Islam were not continually provoking the West with constant terrorist attacks. You are buying into the Muslim-as-victim meme. This makes constructive debate very difficult at best.

They should keep all their options open, but I don't accept that it's either that or futile 'nation-building' exercises.

Then it's time for you to begin posting some contructive input as to what you think are viable measures that can be taken.

Admittedly, for the sake of clarity I am keeping this discussion focused in a black & white perspective.

Snouck: What is your position? Do you advocate Nuclear strikes against civilian populations or not?.

Once again, you are blurring the debate. The large Islamic capitals are not just "civilian populations". They are home to some of the most extensive terrorist facilities in the world. Cairo's El Azhar university is a prime example. This one institution alone continues to churn out jihadist imams by the hundreds.

Each of these Muslim seats of power represent a nexus of global terrorism. None of them have the least claim to innocence. All of them are actively funding international terrorism and their collective leadership remains one of the singular most enabling forces with respect to jihad.

Moreover, one of the only ways of steering Muslims away from their toxic ideology is by proving how totally fallible Allah is up against Western might. Like the destruction of Saudi Arabia's shrines, the destruction of Islam's major governmental centers would demoralize Muslims by the millions. Furthermore, it would instantly remove from power a huge number of America's very worst enemies.

The West has not demanded that Muslims must fight an all or nothing war against us. It is Islam that has set these terms. The time is long overdue for Islam to get an unmistakable taste of the Total War it continues to clamor for.

If such measures as described above are the only way to prevent Islam from acquiring nuclear weapons on a much larger scale, then so be it.

THE ISLAMIC WORLD HAS ALREADY LAUNCHED AN "ALL-OUT WAR" AGAINST THE WEST.

Okay but that war is almost entirely dependent on freedom of movement for alien residents within the West. The 9/11 hijackers didn't capture the planes en route to the US from a foreign country but from within American borders. Some of them applied for Visas before the hijacking and subsequently got INS approval after September 11th!

So we cannot dismiss Muslim access to the West in minor - even near-invisible - percentages as a trivial issue.

FIVE MILLION. Got that?

You're lumping in Muslim-on-Mulim violence which is no concern of ours whatsoever. At the very least we could consider Muslim-on-infidel violence, although there's no definite reason why we have to, which I suppose would still be pretty high in numbers.

That is almost another complete Holocaust caused by Muslims in the last few decades.

This is not an appropriate use of the word Holocaust. Its meaning comes from the Greek words holos, "whole", and caust, "fire". While its true Muslims have a lot of victims they have not near-exterminated an entire race of people by shoving them into ovens.

That our enemy intentionally maintains this conflict at a deceptively low level of intensity in no way changes the need for decisive reprisal.

But it's our leaders who fail to connect the dots between all these various acts of "extremism". So how can they initiate massive retaliation when they've convinced themselves and so many of the Western peoples that there is no core doctrine of aggression against the non-Muslims?

Again, you couch this issue as if Islam were not continually provoking the West with constant terrorist attacks. You are buying into the Muslim-as-victim meme.

I am not buying into any "meme" and I don't think Muslims are victims. I'm talking about US public opinion which by definition cannot include myself. It has been conditioned to think that Muslims are by and large wonderful people and not our enemy. When it comes to Iraqis and Kosovars a great many conservatives especially believe this.

Then it's time for you to begin posting some contructive input as to what you think are viable measures that can be taken.

Yes, I suppose so.

Admittedly, for the sake of clarity I am keeping this discussion focused in a black & white perspective.

Snouck: What would that be? The absence of nuclear strikes got us into this mess?.

You are, again, confusing the debate. It is the absence of any significant retaliation against Islam in general that has gotten us into this mess.

Yes, it would have been a wise decision not to allow Muslim immigration in the first place. That is now water under the bridge.

Despite appearances, the most significant threats do not originate within our immigrant Muslim populations. These threats continue to issue forth from the MME (Muslim Middle East) power centers and nowhere else.

It is these hubs of global terrorism that need to be crippled. I would very much prefer immobilizing just a select few inhabitants of those MME capitals and see the rest demoralized by decimation of their leadership.

BHO and every other Liberal politician is fighting tooth and nail against these sort of productive measures. By doing so, they are only upping the butcher's bill when it becomes past due and the terrorist nuclear attacks begin.

Will anyone hold them criminally responsible for leaving the West unprotected against its avowed enemies?

Snouck: A nuclear strike against a city is a massacre of civilians.

You are changing the subject. Get back on topic.

I beg to differ. You continue to blur the issue by effectively claiming that major Islamic population centers have nothing to do with the sponsorship and training of global terrorism.

It is these large economic engines that drive international terrorism. Little backwater madrassahs would have less than zero impact if not for the funding and material support that flows into them from the large MME cities.

islam o' phobe: Do you have in mind something like the policy described in the excerpt below?.

It would be a great place to start and Bush betrayed our entire nation when he allowed Osama bin Laden's family and other members of the House of Saud to flee America after the 9-11 atrocity.

For those not familiar with the scenario islam o' phobe is referring to, Russian agents swiftly retaliated by kidnapping a young boy―the first son, most likely―of the terrorist leader and then began to mail back body parts as they detached them from the youth in question. It is rumored that a final motivator was the receipt of a single surgically removed testicle from the captive.

Zenster: "Cairo's El Azhar university is a prime example. This one institution alone continues to churn out jihadist imams by the hundreds."

Well, a agressive action of the magnitude of a nuclear strike must be effective in stopping the training of jihadist imams. I'll hencefort call them imams.So Al Azar and the other centres must have the monopoly of imam production in order for the strike to have lasting results. But imam training is not monopolized by Al Azar. These imams can be produced anywhere where there are a few huts plus a few imams.

"Each of these Muslim seats of power represent a nexus of global terrorism. None of them have the least claim to innocence."

My point is not about innocence. My point is that those who attack civilians, especially in large numbers or who use methods that cause large civilian losses, lose the ability to motivate those who are on their side, break up their alliances and fail to attract new allies.

This is all bad for the West from a long term political and a military view.

islam o' phobe: Okay but that war is almost entirely dependent on freedom of movement for alien residents within the West. The 9/11 hijackers didn't capture the planes en route to the US from a foreign country but from within American borders.

Yet, the fact remains that these terrorists were originally indoctrinated and brainwashed at major institutions in the MME (Muslim Middle East). The money to finance their venture and the ideology behind it all reside in these MME power centers and that is what the West needs to dismantle. Nothing less will suffice.

You're lumping in Muslim-on-Mulim violence which is no concern of ours whatsoever. At the very least we could consider Muslim-on-infidel violence, although there's no definite reason why we have to, which I suppose would still be pretty high in numbers.

Why dismiss Muslim-on-Muslim violence? It is a perfect indicatior of what the West can expect once Islam settles up its internecine sectarian differences. The Iraqi conflict's most meaningful message is that, more than anything else, Muslims excel best at killing other Muslims. Fellow Muslims notwithstanding, the numbers are indeed sufficiently high to be cause for concern.

This is not an appropriate use of the word Holocaust. Its meaning comes from the Greek words holos, "whole", and caust, "fire". While its true Muslims have a lot of victims they have not near-exterminated an entire race of people by shoving them into ovens.

While my use of the capitalized word, "Holocaust", was meant for numerical comparison only, there still remains the anti-semitic genocidal aspect of Islam as well. While Muslims do not possess the technology and hardware to execute another Shoa, they most certainly try to be just as methodical as the Germans were. So, the comparison holds water for me.

I just think you haven't fully thought through how a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the MME is as likely to start a massive war as it is to avert one.

How? Islamic nations field the most pathetic and ill trained militaries in what may as well be the entire world. I suggest that you read, "Why Arabs Lose Wars" and base your future opinions with that document in mind. NATO could crush the entire combined might of the MME in a few short weeks.

Should you continue to harbor any doubts. Consider the Iran-Iraq war. These MME military giants fought for eight long years only to reach a bloody stalemate.

Now compare this to America which rolled up Iraq's sidewalks in three short weeks. A combined Western alliance could incapacitate the entire MME in the same short interval.

The Muslims already have their overseas legions in place. France is a nuclear power, yet in grave danger from internal subversion.

Those "legions" could be rounded up by a concerted military effort like so many stray dogs.

Yet, the fact remains that these terrorists were originally indoctrinated and brainwashed at major institutions in the MME (Muslim Middle East).

Didn't some of them go to college in Hamburg? The Koran's the thing that radicalises these guys. For instance take the word talib, it just means "student". As in a student of the Koran. We could reasonably say that Europe is full of Taliban.

Why dismiss Muslim-on-Muslim violence?

I only dismiss it as being a 'provocation' against the West, which was the context.

How can we call the proxy war in Yemen between Eygpt and Saudi Arabia a threat to ourselves? We ought to be encouraging these kinds of internecine conflicts. More Iran-Iraq wars please.

How? Islamic nations field the most pathetic and ill trained militaries in what may as well be the entire world. I suggest that you read, "Why Arabs Lose Wars" and base your future opinions with that document in mind.

I've read it before and as I recall it only applies to the conventional uniformed armies of Arab nation-states. The Hamas and Hezbollah model is much harder to put down. The mujahideen don't suffer from any lack of motivation or ability. Look at what they did to the Soviets in Afghanistan.

NATO could crush the entire combined might of the MME in a few short weeks.

Then why haven't they crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan? I have my own theories on that, I'm just asking rhetorically.

Those "legions" could be rounded up by a concerted military effort like so many stray dogs.

Snouck: These imams can be produced anywhere where there are a few huts plus a few imams.

Your are incredibly wrong. Widely regarded as the "Pope of Islam", Yusuf al-Qaradawi was a graduate of Al Azhar university.

I suggest that you read up a bit more on Islam. Elitism is rampant in Islam and the prestige of having originated from one of these large indoctrination centers plays a major part in the persuasiveness and overall power wielded by such individuals.

Islam is clearly fascist in nature and fascism is a bastion of elitism.

Now consider Khilafat. According to the Arabic lexicon, it means ‘representation’. Man, according to Islam, is the representative of Allah on earth, His vicegerent. That is to say, by virtue of the powers delegated to him by Allah, he is required to exercise his Allah-given authority in this world within the limits prescribed by Allah.

A state that is established in accordance with this political theory will in fact be a human caliphate under the sovereignty of Allah and will do Allah’s will by working within the limits prescribed by Him and in accordance with His instructions and injunctions.”

This definition makes clear that the rule of Islamic system of government is not limited to Muslims but to every “organic or inorganic” thing that exists in this universe. This of course includes the non-Muslims. In an Islamic state everyone must live according to the dictates of Islam.

What we learned so far is that khilafat or the velayat-e faqih are not dissimilar to fascism.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, defines fascism as: “A totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life.”

Characteristics of Fascist Philosophy:

...

A second ruling concept of fascism is embodied in the theory of social Darwinism. The doctrine of survival of the fittest and the necessity of struggle for life is applied by fascists to the life of a nation-state.

...

Imperialism is the logical outcome of this dogma. Another element of fascism is its elitism. Salvation from rule by the mob and the destruction of the existing social order can be effected only by an authoritarian leader who embodies the highest ideals of the nation. [emphasis added]

My point is not about innocence.

Yes it is or else you would not continue to talk about Muslim civilian populations as though they have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. Where do you think the money that finances international terrorism comes from? Saudi Arabia most certainly does not provide all of the funding. Zakat is a source of huge wealth that drives Islamic terrorism and these large cities pay until millions in zakat each year.

Your average Muslim is far from innocent. One sure indicator is the almost total absence of vociferous dissenters within Islam. Where are the Muslim mass protests against terrorist atrocities? Where are the Muslims demanding that the inhumanity of shari'a law be modified? Where are the Muslims swearing allegiance to America's flag and constitutional ideals?

islam o' phobe: I've read it before and as I recall it only applies to the conventional uniformed armies of Arab nation-states. The Hamas and Hezbollah model is much harder to put down. The mujahideen don't suffer from any lack of motivation or ability. Look at what they did to the Soviets in Afghanistan.

The Afghani mujahideen might just as well have been wiped out were it not for the US-provided Stinger shoulder-launch missiles which proved so devastating aginst the primary Soviet weapon, the Mi-24 Hind helicopter.

As to Hamas and Hezbollah being much harder "to put down": THIS IS MY ENTIRE POINT.

Until Islam begins to pay an exceptionally dear price for violating the traditional rules of combat, the West will continue to take it in the shorts.

If Muslims have no qualms about how theiir fighters use civilian garb, then we in the West should have little compunction about blowing away whomever we please.

No, this is not a call for indiscriminate slaughter. But it still remains the case that Islam is effectively rewarded for its perfidy so long as we unilaterally adhere to the Geneva Conventions while they do nothing of the sort.

Then why haven't they crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan? I have my own theories on that, I'm just asking rhetorically.

Anyone who studies Arab culture and the Arab mind that infuses Islam knows that the only thing it respects and fears is force. It is the creed of a primitive war lord after all.

Conversely, it despises weakness. What westerners call negotiation is completely foreign to the Arab mind. For any concession the West makes, Muslims demand another and another and another.

OK. That's the Arab way, but how stupid or co-opted are Western negotiators to ignore the lack of reciprocity and to give away the farm piece by piece while getting nothing in return? Any suburban housewife who haggles at Best Buy could do a better job. Career "diplomats" aka dhimmis push Israel into following this suicidal path, giving land in return for undelivered peace. In fact, Palis have not even promised peace as the Hamas charter documents. It's Western meddlers who keep flogging the fantasy of land for peace apparently not noticing that Palis and their negotiators are not actually promising or delivering peace except the hudna temporary strategic type when they've taken another beating and need to regroup.

So what is the minimum show of force that will get Muslims to start patrolling their own fanatics instead of presently enabling them with financial contributions, hiding them from authorities, burdening the West with their welfare and lawfare bills etc?

The Russians leveled Grozny in the Chechen subjugation and have suffered no retribution from Muslims around the world. Israelis fighting Pali bombs and abductions in a half-assed way trying to conserve "world opinion" that's morally worth spit get new bombs for their pains. The United States that has unwisely aided Muslims in Kosovo got 9/11 as their "appreciation".

From the above lesson, nuclear annihilation is not yet necessary but a tough policy of disproportionate force to every Muslim aggression is.

Warn them of the consequences if they continue to misbehave. They call themselves the umma and act like a worldwide community when it suits them. Fine. Let them also suffer collective punishment.

Some thoughts on how to proceed getting rid of undesirables. Let good old social ostracism do its work.

At the very least, all free speech shackles come off the host culture and they may criticize Muslim immigrants as they see fit. Thin skinned Muslims may leave on this proviso alone when they are no longer allowed to whine and get their critics punished by the state for the invented "sin" of Islamophobia. Let Islam take its lumps in the public marketplace of ideas as Christianity has. Those who can't take the heat, get out of the western kitchen.

Cease funding of any and all multicultural initiatives. No group gets state money to promote its heritage.

Publish all recent immigrant crime statistics, the cost of free health care, education and social services and reveal which groups are not a net benefit to the economy.

All Muslim immigration to Western nations closed until present immigrants stop all hostile acts. And/or Western authorities can explain that there has been a gross misunderstanding. Sharia will never become the law of western lands and devout Muslims are dedicated to bringing in sharia so...clearly they will not want to migrate once they realize sharia's an impossibility.

Not a single additional mosque to be constructed on Western soil until there is reciprocal freedom to build churches, synagogues etc. in all 57 Muslim nations. Existing mosques to be monitored for jihadist preaching.

No proselytizing in western jails until Christians are free to convert Muslims in Muslim nations.

Muslim criminals and their families to be deported without interminable appeals.

Welfare rates lowered after one year notice for immigrants on Welfare. If they cannot find jobs that will sustain them in that time, they will receive a one way ticket back to lands where indolence is a virtue.

There's a lot of space between nuclear annihilation and squeezing Muslims out by making them feel rightly unwelcome given their supremacist agenda. Let's fill that space with thousands of cold shoulders.

For this to work, the PC shackles imposed by the domestic Left need to be broken by each of us as individuals and in whatever groups we have membership in, coalescing in a large enough group that we can no longer be dragged off to human rights commissions or "re-education camps in diversity" by Stasi type leftist bureaucrats.

In a chess book, there was the following advice. "You must not WAIT FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN, YOU MUST MAKE THEM HAPPEN, IF YOU DO NOT, THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU."

I submit, that as in chess, so is war and societal strategy. THE GREAT WEAKNESS OF THE RIGHT IS THAT THEY HAVE A DECENT IDEA OF WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN, BUT HAVE NOT FORMULATED PLANS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN, RATHER THEY HAVE SIMPLY EXPECTED THAT WHAT IS RIGHT WILL AUTOMATICALLY HAPPEN.

This is the problem with the "third party thinking" [i'll only vote for people 'good enough' {well, then you will lose by default, because you won't always fight}] -- The thinking is "I have a right to justice and what is right, and I can just sit back and enjoy my right {I'll go about my business and the world will take care of itself}--This is the fault OF THE RIGHT that is KILLING US.

The Left has a far diffenent problem -- they REALLY KNOW HOW TO MAKE WHAT THEY WANT TO HAPPEN HAPPEN (startegy, organization, tactics, building forces, etc. [read Gramsci, Alinsky, etc.)-- However, they are victims of their own success, their hubris has run wild, and THEY ARE TOTALLY DISCONECTED FROM REALITY [they think they can DO WHAT THEY LIKE WITH NO CONSEQUENCES EVER]. AMONG OTHER THINGS, THEY THINK THAT THEY ARE 'MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE' and the ONE FINAL OBSTACLE TO WORLD UTOPIA IS THAT THESE ANGELIC MUSLIMS HAVEN'T BEEN GIVEN ENOUGH OF WHAT THEY WANT!!!!

Meanwhile, islamists have a GREAT GRASP ON REALITY and THEY HAVE LEARNED EVERYTHING ON HOW TO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN THAT THE LEFTISTS KNOW AND DO [they learned in the 20th. century, they didn't know all of this in the 1st and 2nd jihads, because WE WESTERNERS hadn't INVENTED these tactics and strategies YET].

Thus so, an evaluation of Islam as a fighting collective in the 21st century will quickly reveal that it's "the BEEEEEEEEEEEST OF BOTH WORLDS, IT'S THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEST OF BOTH WORLDS!!" -- as miley CYRUS croons [ but NOT FOR US!!!]

But back to your incessant meme of "someone will stage a coup, Nuke the MME, and ALL WILL BE WELL", I think the real weakness is that there is NO PLAN FOR HOW TO RUN SOCIETY UNDER A MILLITARY GOVERNMENT IN THE WEST (at least among the right). It is one thing to bring people around to supporting a coup, another to succeed in doing it, and an EVEN GREATER ONE TO MAINTAIN THE LEGITIMACY OF A MILLITARY GOVERNMENT LONG ENOUGH to deliver a massive strike (a millitary government in the West would have more pressing problems than the MME--) like staying in power-- against the UNIMAGINABLY FEROCIOUS BALLISTIC ASSAULT FROM EVERY SECTOR OF THE LEFT (What they did to Bush and Palin WILL LOOK LIKE A PEACEFUL PICNIC BY COMPARISON)[do you really think that the Left will take it lying down??? they send NATO in against the "rogue regime"]. And another question-- If the millitary government falls, WHAT WILL THE LEFT DO?? Julis Ceasar was assisinated by men who wanted to restore the republic-- Be careful what you wish for.

Coups happen often in 3rd. world countries, but it is so alien to Western countries that WE HAVE NO PLAN TO MAKE ANYTHING HAPPEN.

I will write a post about the best example of a millitary COUP that achieved some good AND TERRIFIES THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THE LEFT --Oliver Cromwell in the 1650's.

But anyway, until their is a well-organized plan to GET AND KEEP A PATRIOTIC GOVERNMENT in power, IT WON'T HAPPEN IN A WAY THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED SUCCESSFUL-- NO MILLITARY OFFICER IS GOING TO OPEN THE 'SILO OF WORMS' WITHOUT A PLAN, BECAUSE THE PERSONAL RISKS ARE TOO GREAT, and personally he can get by without much trouble if he does nothing.

Our weakness (of right-wing patriots) is that we expect heroism of our leaders while we go about our business. If the masses don't know how to do strategic planning and thinking, the leaders won't do it either.

I suggest to Zenster that he write a philosophical treatise on how a millitary government can and should gain and maintain power with legitimacy in the West. He needs to explain how one passes GO and collects $200 !! He needs to think anew instead of expecting problems to solve themselves, somehow. If we just wait for the MME to be nuked, it WILL NEVER HAPPEN, OR NOTHING GOOD (FOR US) WILL COME OF IT IN THE END.

"You must not WAIT FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN, YOU MUST MAKE THEM HAPPEN. IF YOU DO NOT, THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU."

Final point: Muslims KNOW WHAT THIS STRUGGLE IS ABOUT-- It is not millitary, it is GEOPOLITICAL. The key thing to watch for, is not terrorist attacks or "cultural enrichment", but the actions of WESTERN LEADERS in appeasing ISLAM-- THAT IS WHAT TELLS THE REAL STORY.

Military jihadis are the least sophisticated (in terms of cultural technology) of Islamists.(Why fight when you can shout "Western Imperialism" and get what you want?)

Another subpoint-- If some kafir group was attacking muslims the way islamists attack kafirs, muslims would have ALREADY KILLED THEIR LEADERS LONG AGO and gotten leaders that would DEFEND THEM.

They interpret western people's inability /unwillingness to do so as a sign of unfathomable weakness and boneheaded, sucidal lunacy.-- AND WE MUST REALIZE THAT THEY ARE MORE RIGHT THAN WE THINK. THEY DO WHAT WORKS ON US.

If we can't get leaders who want to PROTECT US (due to lack of 'making things happen' and 'waiting for things to happen') on what basis does our civilization deserve to survive?? Why shouldn't the muslims survive instead??

laine: ... how stupid or co-opted are Western negotiators to ignore the lack of reciprocity ...

Answer: So far beyond stupid that only outright malfeasance can explain it. My latest submission to Gates of Vienna is an essay titled "A Rejection of Reciprocity" and it deals with this exact subject.

It's Western meddlers who keep flogging the fantasy of land for peace apparently not noticing that Palis and their negotiators are not actually promising or delivering peace except the hudna temporary strategic type when they've taken another beating and need to regroup.

My personal vision of "land for peace" involves Israel taking several acres of land for every rocket fired by the Palestinians, never to returned under any circumstances, ever. For every Israeli death, a dozen acres are taken and so forth until the Palestinians find themselves crowded onto a postage stamp and finally begin to rethink their drink. If land is so precious to these cretins, start taking it away until they purchase a clue.

So what is the minimum show of force that will get Muslims to start patrolling their own fanatics instead of presently enabling them with financial contributions, hiding them from authorities, burdening the West with their welfare and lawfare bills etc?.

This is the main question and you have summarized it rather neatly. Either Islam's top echelons begin to assume room temperature or entire Muslim cities get their rubble bounced a few times. There are no other alternatives.

Somehow, enough Muslims have to die―be it the important ones or your average carpet weavers―until Islam decides that global jihad isn't such a good idea after all.

Taqiyya, Kitman and Hudna preclude any alternatives, ever.

From the above lesson, nuclear annihilation is not yet necessary but a tough policy of disproportionate force to every Muslim aggression is.

Again, well said. In the absence of targeted assassinations, I continue to advocate a policy of Massively Disproportionate Retaliation such that Muslims become motivated to police their own ranks.

Harsh as it sounds, if it requires killing every single Muslim on earth to prevent all further Islamic terrorism, then so be it. Our world cannot and must not endure any more terrorist atrocities. The loss of human life and economic damage caused by terrorist attacks constitute crimes against humanity and such predatory behavior simply cannot be tolerated in a civilized world.

They call themselves the umma and act like a worldwide community when it suits them. Fine. Let them also suffer collective punishment.

Again, you nail the issue spot on. If Muslims want the prestige of being a global community, they must be prepared to take responsibility on a global level. So far, all the West has been presented with is a bunch of bullying whiners who refuse to accept blame for what the vast majority of them sponsor and support both willingly and knowingly.

Islam cannot have its cake and eat it too.

Not a single additional mosque to be constructed on Western soil until there is reciprocal freedom to build churches, synagogues etc. in all 57 Muslim nations. Existing mosques to be monitored for jihadist preaching.

No proselytizing in western jails until Christians are free to convert Muslims in Muslim nations.

These two very basic components of reciprocity should form the bedrock of international policy concerning Islam. For either of them to take place, Islam will have to undergo a sea change in its doctrine.

Do not fool yourself that any such thing will ever take place. All the same, the restrictions that must necessarily follow are vital to protect Western civilization from further Islamic encroachment.

OFF TOPIC: laine, when will you please begin to submit essays to Gates of Vienna? You have a solid grasp upon the dilemmas currently confronting America and Europe. It is critical that all able-minded people begin sharing their own personal visions regarding what it will take to stem the tide of Islamic colonization in the West. Please consider penning some articles in the near future.

Watching Eagle: In a chess book, there was the following advice. "You must not WAIT FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN, YOU MUST MAKE THEM HAPPEN, IF YOU DO NOT, THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.".

In traditional chess strategy, this is called "controlling the tempo".

Watching Eagle: But back to your incessant meme of "someone will stage a coup, Nuke the MME, and ALL WILL BE WELL" ...

Ahem, whose "meme" are you speaking of?

I have no illusions of any coups being staged. Nor do I primarily advocate first-use nuclear attacks upon the MME (Muslim Middle East). Finally, I have no illusions that should such events come to pass that "ALL WILL BE WELL".

However, I retain sufficient confidence in America's military where hope remains that the leaders of our armed forces would speedily eject any sitting president who did not respond in kind to a nuclear terrorist attack―be it direct or by proxy―upon American soil.

I also continue to see every indication that the current trend in international affairs is leading directly towards nuclear proliferation in the MME and, thereby, an eventual nuclear exchange because of that proliferation.

Furthermore, whatever it will require to subjugate Islam, one can be sure this world will have undergone a major upheaval in the process.

Again, so be it. Far better that we rid this planet of Islamic terrorism than tolerate any group's quest for global theocratic domination. Theocracy represents one of the single greatest abuses of power and cannot be tolerated in any form.

I suggest to Zenster that he write a philosophical treatise on how a millitary government can and should gain and maintain power with legitimacy in the West. He needs to explain how one passes GO and collects $200 !! He needs to think anew instead of expecting problems to solve themselves, somehow. If we just wait for the MME to be nuked, it WILL NEVER HAPPEN, OR NOTHING GOOD (FOR US) WILL COME OF IT IN THE END.

And I suggest that you lay off of the Caplock key. It really damages your effect to typographically "shout" all the time.

I will not waste my time explaining how "a millitary government can and should gain and maintain power with legitimacy in the West". In case you haven't been paying attention, I advocate no such thing.

What's more, I do not expect "problems to solve themselves" and that is the principal reason why―by the gracious consent of the Baron and Dymphna―I have published several different essays here. Something you have yet to do yourself.

I make no pretense of my ideas being popular or even acceptable to most people. What I do try to do is increase public awareness of the stark choices that await us should we continue the current course of near-total inaction.

If some kafir group was attacking muslims the way islamists attack kafirs, muslims would have ALREADY KILLED THEIR LEADERS LONG AGO and gotten leaders that would DEFEND THEM.

This is something I have been saying for years. The West needs to begin inflicting sufficient harm upon the global Muslim community―with a main focus upon the MME―such that they begin exterminating the jihadis.

AND WE MUST REALIZE THAT THEY ARE MORE RIGHT THAN WE THINK. THEY DO WHAT WORKS ON US.

Here, I take issue. The terrorists are doing what is expedient. They most definitely are not doing what is "right". Neither morally nor strategically in any case. In the final analysis Islamic terrorism will have had one major effect and that is to oblige the civilized world to exterminate all traces of it.

This can happen sooner or later, but it will happen.

Anyway, go back to the drawing board and think about it.

Too late. I already have and await for you to make a more constructive contribution than mere comments with the shift key held down. The ball is in your court with respect to producing some sort of coherent plan that has any chance of saving Western civilization.

"I will not waste my time explaining how "a millitary government can and should gain and maintain power with legitimacy in the West". In case you haven't been paying attention, I advocate no such thing."

You got me confused. Earlier when I said that "No leftist president will EVER use nuclear weapons on the MME" you said that the U.S. Military would kick that president out and take over (for doing nothing). Now you say that you advocate no such thing. You must have something 'in between' in mind, but I don't quite understand it.

Next, you seem to have misunderstood me and taken something I said out of context. You quoted me and then said the following:

"AND WE MUST REALIZE THAT THEY ARE MORE RIGHT THAN WE THINK. THEY DO WHAT WORKS ON US."

'Here, I take issue. The terrorists are doing what is expedient. They most definitely are not doing what is "right". Neither morally nor strategically in any case.'

You did NOT seem to understand whatI meant. The full relevant quote is as follows:

'They interpret western people's inability /unwillingness to do so as a sign of unfathomable weakness and boneheaded, sucidal lunacy.-- AND WE MUST REALIZE THAT THEY ARE MORE RIGHT THAN WE THINK. THEY DO WHAT WORKS ON US.'

What I meant was that the interpretation that Western society DOES have issues of unfathomable weakness and boneheaded, sucidal lunacy is more accurate than most Westerners realize. Furthermore, these weaknesses make islamists believe they can win. Westerners should get rid of these tendencies NOW (by removing traitors from power).

Finally, you said:

'The ball is in your court with respect to producing some sort of coherent plan that has any chance of saving Western civilization.'

I am glad that the ball is in my court! First, I am approaching this issue from the angle of survival of our civilization.

3 things MUST be done:

1)Resume the struggle for survival in enough Western citizen's consciousness by getting people to be responsible and disciplined.

2)Produce plans to run Western society with the Leftists removed from Power (so we don't create a vacuum. Attack the Left effectively, have great organization to do so, and "daisy cutter" their philosophies to induce "shell shock" among leftists (as Reagan did with the Soviet Union). Re-order society in a way that leftism is profoundly out of place in our society.

3)While making Western culture worthy of survival, explain to Muslims that WE Will fight and Defeat them all, since we have solved our society's problems and Now have another John Sobeski Moment. Then we will drive them out.

I suggest you read the book that opened my eyes to the real struggle of The 3rd. Jihad --"America Alone --The end of the world as we know it" by Mark Steyn

Also read "Londonistan" by Melanie Philips.

If you read these books, you may begin understand the angle I am coming from. My aim is to explain the situation deeper still than these two books. I also will try to read any books you recommend.

I encourage you to do so. You clearly have a message to share. A concise writing style will help that message to reach more people.

Earlier when I said that "No leftist president will EVER use nuclear weapons on the MME" you said that the U.S. Military would kick that president out and take over (for doing nothing). Now you say that you advocate no such thing. You must have something 'in between' in mind, but I don't quite understand it.

Thank you for examining the middle ground. I never have said that America should be ruled by a military junta. However, I do hope that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would override any sitting president that refuses to retaliate against a nuclear (or WMD) terrorist attack. Doing major harm to America must always carry a steep price tag.

Personally, I would prefer that our government put the rogue nations of North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Syria (to name a few), on notice that one WMD attack upon the USA gets all of them glassed and Windexed™.

Such a move would be subject to post-attack microassay so as to identify a probable source of the fissile material for response targeting purposes. If the radioactive signature cannot not be indentified, then it could safely be assumed that one of the rogue states produced the bomb material. [to be continued]

I suggest you read the book that opened my eyes to the real struggle of The 3rd. Jihad --"America Alone --The end of the world as we know it" by Mark Steyn

I've read that book and in my opinion it's terrible.

A few weeks ago, on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Steyn said that the Muslim doctors in Glasgow who attempted to launch a (failed) terrorist attack on their colleagues did so because of the disincentives resulting from the policies of the National Health Service. Which is sophist and absurd. It's also completely brain-dead.

The entire book is fully of constant gloating over and childish jokes about the death of European civillisation. Which would be just about takeable if Steyn would offer serious proposals for immigration restrictionism. He does not. Just the usual neoconservative blather about 'reform' and 'assimiliation'.

Also he does a great disservice to his American readers in his attempts to flatter them to death. Once you discount for the 20 million Hispanic colonists and their anchor babies, the U.S. birth rate is the same as in Australia and Ireland and only slightly above that of Norway, Denmark, Finland and the UK yet he writes as there were a huge gulf which turns Americans into indifferent spectators.

More than anything he reminds me of the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned.

Watching Eagle: What I meant was that the interpretation that Western society DOES have issues of unfathomable weakness and boneheaded, sucidal lunacy is more accurate than most Westerners realize. Furthermore, these weaknesses make islamists believe they can win.

Your point was clear the first time around. It was my intent to show that poorly armed Islam is using expedient (i.e., terrorist) measures that are literally guaranteed to backfire upon the entire ummah. A gradual process of peaceful "slow jihad" would pose far fewer moral dilemmas and be less likely to result in the impending holocaust that awaits Muslims for inflicting escalating terrorist atrocities.

Yes, Muslims do perceive the West as weak-willed but their own mental laziness or irrationality endangers them far more by allowing for a false sense of security when the entire MME (Muslim Middle East) is perched on a razor's edge of survival.

Remember, just cutting off wheat shipments for a few months would cause mass starvation throughout the MME within a few short weeks.

I also agree with your own framework but still maintain the timeline that confronts us is far too short for those efforts to have any meaningful effect vis impending terrorist attacks.

De-liberalizing America will take several decades. The proliferation of nuclear weapons within the MME will happen much faster and result in a WMD terrorist attack long before the USA can get its house in order.

This is why I continue to advocate far more aggressive measures that are designed to deter future attacks. Scroll down in this thread to see my own analysis of what strategies might functionally deter future terrorist attacks.

I have not read the books you suggest but will keep an eye out for them. At another time I will submit a brief reading list that you might enjoy.

Finally, thank you for making a genuine effort to engage in a productive manner on this admittedly difficult topic. Energetic and creative debate regarding how to deal with Islam is a vital avenue when it comes to originating new strategies which could help avoid the massive loss of human life that Muslims are trying to bring about.

Maybe you ought to take a look at that book again. As for your claim that Mark Steyn said that, show me documentation. That is completely out of character with everything in the book or that I heard him ever say. Maybe he was being sarcastic or saying that that was the Leftist "explanation" of the suicide bombers-- par for the course for "Leftist reasoning.

Concerning fertility rates, Whites DO have a slightly higher fertility rate than they did 30 years ago. Large families are more common today than they used to be (and even hispanics in the U.S. have higher fertility rates than in many latin american countries). Meanwhile Europe's fertility rates createred during the same 30 years.

As for immigration restrictionism, that is NOT the subject of the book, (Steyn is for stopping illegal immigration).

Steyn also has very refreshing views on "reform' and 'Assimilation' (especially about why people assimilate to another culture, and who will be assimilated).

I still don't really understand what a "neo-conservative" is-- it is just a bogey word of the Left to me.

Finally, the book was written 3 years ago. From what I have seen in the past 3 years (and heard Mark Steyn say) if he wrote the book today, he would be less sanguine about America's chances of survival than he was.

Read the book to find the deeper story of the The Third Jihad.

From a movie by the same name, the Narrator, Zudi Jasser, says, "We all know about terrorism. THIS IS the War YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT"

Your thread was quite good. I will comment on it more when I examine it further.

I agree that we need more tough measures to stop future terrorist attacks. I appreciate your explaining your theory of military intervention. I would like to ask if you think that it would be that the chiefs of Staff ignore the President (push the button) or depose the president (kick him out and rule). While both are possible, my studies indicate that either approach would have some obstacles for the Cheifs of staff to overcome [which could stop them from doing so]. I would like to see what you think would happen and have you answer the hypothetical objections and obstacles that the Cheifs of Staff would have to deal with (I'll sort of pretend I was them, state the problems, and you can provide me [and them] with the answers.)

I have thought of two other books you could read.

Ist., The West's Last Chance, by Tony Blankley. I think this Book underestimates the threat of The Third Jihad, but it does explore historical precedent for the government taking actions to protect its citizens that even Patriots might not think of doing today.

Secondly, "Unholy Alliance--Radical Islam and the American Left", by David Horoitz; shows the obstacles to defeating the Islamists from OUR OWN fellow citizens. This will be helpful to you as you formulate strategies to save our civilization.

One more thing: I was one who was not really concerned about The Third Jihad until I saw what was happening with new eyes from reading these books. I will pose a post that is the basis for my coming book soon.

Watching Eagle: I would like to ask if you think that it would be that the chiefs of Staff ignore the President (push the button) or depose the president (kick him out and rule).

Lacking in depth knowledge of how the line of succession works, I would suppose a Commander in Chief who refused to activate America's historic response in kind doctrine (or its modern variant), could be eligible for charges of malfeasance of office and be subjected to removal from his post.

Had the USA undergone a WMD attack, a declaration of martial law might streamline any potential interference that presidential successors might pose.

Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution: In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the Case of Removal, death, resignation or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The oath of office includes this language:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

An unwillingness to retaliate in the face of a massive enemy attack easily could be construed as failure to "preserve, protect and defend", thereby justifying immediate removal from office.

The main point being that America's military is loyal to its nation to an equal or greater degree than just its Commander in Chief. A soldier's oath of enlistment reads similarly:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.". [emphasis added]

The "officers appointed over me" clause could easily extend to superiors who demonstrated a more vigorous and sincere determination to "support and defend" our nation if that effort represented a more coherent and effective response to enemy attack.

Finally, I have faith that any interegnum military command would declare a new election cycle in order to create a peaceful transition back to elected representation.

As for your claim that Mark Steyn said that, show me documentation. That is completely out of character with everything in the book or that I heard him ever say. Maybe he was being sarcastic or saying that that was the Leftist "explanation" of the suicide bombers-- par for the course for "Leftist reasoning.

"MS: Yes, and in fact, that’s always the way. If you looked at when socialized health care was introduced in Canada in the 1960s, the majority of doctors opposed it. If you look at in Britain when the national health service was introduced in the late 1940s, the majority of doctors opposed it. What happens is they leave it to too late to speak up. And what happens is that once it starts, medicine ceases to be an attractive middle class profession. And you see in extreme circumstances what happened at Glasgow Airport when those three British Muslim doctors attempted to blow up Glasgow Airport. People don’t understand why somebody, why doctors want to go around being suicide bombers. Well, one reason is that in under a socialized system, what happens, one of the first things that happens is that medicine ceases to be as attractive a middle class profession as it was. So doctors would be acting in their own best interest if they were to stop this now."

Steyn also has very refreshing views on "reform' and 'Assimilation' (especially about why people assimilate to another culture, and who will be assimilated).

He does not understand that Islam is unreformable. This is why he invents motivations for Islamic terrorism that have nothing to do with Mohammed's prescriptive command to "slay the unbelievers wherever ye find them". This "leftist reasoning" is legion among mainstream conservatives.

Ironically the faster downfall of certain countries may spare other ones as they serve as warning examples. And if some european countries remain stable and prosperous it will significantly decrease the consequences of civil war in other european nations.Like imagine islamists+radical leftists fighting nationalists in Sweden.Now imagine how the tables would turn if Finland would intervene militarily and provide humanitarian aid.Mind you that even after the cuts our operational troops will number over 250,000 soldiers.And seeing what is happening in France, UK, Denmark, Norway and most importantly Sweden people are becoming more and more vary towards "multiculturalism".So keep spreading the word.